By Prensa Latina,
Cairo : The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) denied Sunday it replaced the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), although it rejected its program and vindicated legitimacy of the Israeli occupation resistance.
Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said his group is ready to join the PLO, but under certain conditions and without resigning to the struggle to end usurpation of territories for the Israel state.
“We hope to win Arab and international legitimacy and all what the PLO has achieved through elections, and joins to it. We are in favor of preserving the PLO structure, no its program,” Al-Zahar told Qatari Al-Jazeera channel.
“If we are a minority, let’s respect that, but if we are majority, they must respect it,” said the leader, alluding the organization founded in 1964 and ignoring the overwhelming Hamas victory in the 2006 legislative elections.
The PLO is led by Al-Fatah, directed by President Mahmoud Abbas and made up of ten political factions.
Hamas and the Islamic Jihad Movement, both from confessional base, never joined together, despite they inked an accord in 2005 to concrete the Palestinian unity.
Al-Zahar traveled Saturday to Egypt to attend contacts with local mediators to sign a lasting ceasefire accord with Israel after the military offensive in Gaza, which killed more than 300 people and wounded some 5,000.
His presence here coincided today with the launching of a rocket from the Gaza Strip that rammed a rural community or kibbutz in the city of Sderot, with no victims, in which a car was burned and other two suffered several damages.